South Korea Is Crushing The Nasdaq 100 By Widest Margin Since 2001

South Korean equities, led by a memory-chip frenzy, have outperformed the Nasdaq 100 by the widest margin since 2001. The iShares South Korea ETF (EWY) has returned 104.04% year-to-date through May 27 versus the Nasdaq 100 proxy QQQ’s 18.75%, an 85 percentage-point divergence. The gap is concentrated in SK Hynix and Samsung, which together are 52.94% of EWY and recently topped $1 trillion market caps as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) demand from AI server builders surges. U.S. memory names (Micron, Intel) have posted large gains too, but the heavyweight Magnificent Seven tech stocks have limited QQQ’s upside. The shift highlights a material regional re-rating linked to the AI hardware cycle.